Books like 'The Sot-Weed Factor'
Readers who enjoyed The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf, Yevgeny Petrov
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsOstap Bender is an unemployed con artist living by his wits in postrevolutionary Soviet Russia. He joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to find a cache of missing jewels which were hidden in some chairs that have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 98 ratingsWhat happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride...Categorized as:
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The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsMoscow, 1929: a city that has lost its way amid corruption and fear, inhabited by people who have abandoned their morals and forsaken spirituality. But when a mysterious stranger arrives in town with a bizarre entourage that includes a giant talking cat and a fanged assassin, all hell breaks loose...Categorized as:
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Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsWhen We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six complete the four-volume set of deluxe editions of the Milne and Shepard classic works. Like their companions, the Winnie-the-Pooh 80th Anniversary Edition and The House At Pooh Corner, these beautiful books feature full-color artwork on cream-colored stock...Categorized as:
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Flashman in the Great Game by George MacDonald Fraser
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsOne of literature's most delightful rakes is back in another tale of rollicking adventure and tantalizing seduction. The plucky Flashman's latest escapades are sure to entertain devotees as well as attract new aficionados...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Grand Budapest Hotel: The Illustrated Screenplay by Wes Anderson
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings(Book). The Grand Budapest Hotel recounts the adventures of Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. Acting as a kind of father figure, M... -
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsLarry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob...Categorized as:
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Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus. Franz-Josef Murau—the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family—lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis ninth volume of The Flashman Papers, faithfully edited and transcribed by Fraser, finds that Sir Harry Flashman is back in India, where his saga began. This time, our hero is sent by Her Majesty's Secret Service to spy on the corrupt court of Lahore, on India's Northwest Frontier. Flashy's most challenging exploit yet is as politically shrewd and thoroughly lewd as ever...Categorized as:
historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Flashman and the Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHarry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all...Categorized as:
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Little Big Man by Thomas Berger
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"I am a white man and never forget it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten."So starts the story of Jack Crabb, the 111-year old narrator of Thomas Berger's masterpiece of American fiction. As a "human being", as the Cheyenne called their own, he won the name Little Big Man...Categorized as:
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The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsFor deft plotting, riotous inventiveness, unforgettable characters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain’s inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years...Categorized as:
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Selected Stories by O. Henry
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"Selected Stories of O. Henry," by O. Henry, is part of the "Barnes & Noble Classics"" "series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras...Categorized as:
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The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWhen the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on business, he leaves his only daughter Sophia with his sister, Elizabeth Rivenhall, in Berkeley Square. Newly arrived from her tour of the Continent, Sophy invites herself into the circle of her relatives...Categorized as:
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Manalive by G.K. Chesterton
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPerhaps the most light-hearted of all Chesterton's "serious" works, Manalive pits a group of disillusioned young people against Mr. Innocent Smith, a bubbly, high-spirited gentleman who literally falls into their midst. Later accused of murder and denounced for philandering everywhere he goes, Smith prompts his newfound acquaintances to recognize an important idea in most unexpected ways...Categorized as:
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The Sea and Little Fishes by Terry Pratchett
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFree online fiction. Novelette.This is the story of the time that Granny Weatherwax didn't win the Witch Trials and was nice about it, too. It was horrifying."It's not right! She's got no right to go around being cheerful at people!"Originally published in the collection Legends Vol. 3... -
My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, Azar Nafisi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA teenage boy makes the mistake of falling in love with the much-protected daughter of his uncle, mischievously nicknamed after his hero Napoleon Bonaparte, the curmudgeonly self-appointed patriarch of a large and extended Iranian family in 1940s Tehran...Categorized as:
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The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe pushcarts have declared war! New York City's streets are clogged with huge, rude trucks that park where they want, hold up traffic, and bulldoze into anything that is in their way, and the pushcart peddlers are determined to get rid of them. But the trucks are just as determined to get rid of the pushcarts, and chaos results in the city...Categorized as:
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Flashman's Lady by George MacDonald Fraser
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFlashy, that lustful libertine, takes a round-the-world adventure that would shock Don Juan and make swingers of today green with envy. In an English mansion, he's not just doodling in the drawing room with a blue blood's red-hot-blooded mistress; in Africa, he's forced to serve a sultry queen who kills low-endurance lovers...Categorized as:
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Fish Preferred by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHugh Carmody loved Millicent, Lord Emsworth niece, but he was very good friends with Sue Brown - an attachment which Millicent, perhaps, could hardly be expected to enthuse over. Ronnie Fish loved Sue, and entertained feelings o unrestrained ferocity towards Pilbeam, a blister of the first water, who was pestering her with flowers...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Primary Phase by Douglas Adams, Simon Jones
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Special Edition of the original radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978 and recently voted the Nation's Favourite Audiobook in a Guardian poll... -
War with the Newts by Karel Čapek
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsMan discovers a species of giant, intelligent newts and learns to exploit them so successfully that the newts gain skills and arms enough to challenge man's place at the top of the animal kingdom. Along the way, Karel Capek satirizes science, runaway capitalism, fascism, journalism, militarism, even Hollywood...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Selected Stories by O. Henry
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsO. Henry originated the humorous, energetic tale that ends with an ironic, even shocking twist. In "After Twenty Years," for example, two boys agree to meet at a particular spot exactly twenty years later. Both are faithful, but in the intervening years one boy has turned into a criminal, the other into a policeman...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure anthologies comedy -
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsCharles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, major caffeine abuse... -
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Emil's Pranks by Astrid Lindgren
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMischievous Emil tests out a pair of stilts, rides a horse, and goes on a sleigh ride, all with predictably disastrous results...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children -
Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs two pals wander the streets of Belfast in search of something better--a better pint, a better job, a better woman, a better now--readers are treated to their hilarious misadventures, political intrigues, and outlandish schemes...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsrelates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical Satan, in Eseldorf, an Austrian village in the year 1702. Twain wrote this version between November 1897 and September 1900. "Eseldorf" is German for "Assville" or "Donkeytown"...Categorized as:
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Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, Joan Wolf
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen the news went out that Sylvester Rayne, the elegant, impeccable Duke of Salford, was seeking a wife, all England was aflutter! Lord Sylvester is a polished bachelor who has stringent requirements for his future wife -- she must be well-born, intelligent, elegant and attractive. And of course she must be able to present herself well in high society...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 94 ratingsSelected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most... -
Mister Roberts by Thomas Heggen
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe novel, Mister Roberts, was an instant hit after being published in 1946 and was quickly adapted for the stage and screen. The title character, a Lieutenant Junior Grade naval officer, defends his crew against the petty tyranny of the ship's commanding officer during World War II... -
Les Liaisons Dangereuses a Play by Christopher Hampton
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"Les Liaisons Dangereuses", A Play by Christopher Hampton, from the novel by Choderlos de Laclos. Produced on the Broadway Stage by James M. Nederlander, The Schubert Organization, Inc., Jerome Minskoff, Elizabeth I. McCann and Stephen Graham in association with Jonathan Farkas...Categorized as:
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The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories by Connie Willis
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThis new collection of stories from the multi-award-winning author of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog contains:A Letter from the ClearysAt the RialtoDeath on the NileThe Soul Selects Her own SocietyFire WatchInside JobEven the QueenThe Winds of Marble ArchAll Seated on the GroundLast of the WinnebagosTen stories - which have all won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award or both - are...Categorized as:
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The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEngland in the middle of World War II, a war that seems fated to go on forever, a war that has become a way of life. Heroic resistance is old hat. Everything is in short supply, and tempers are even shorter...Categorized as:
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Around the World with Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis, Edward Everett Tanner III
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEncore, Encore! The brilliant sequel to the smash bestseller Auntie Mame is back and the reviews are in ..Categorized as:
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A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana—the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film.The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year...Categorized as:
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I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFirst published in 1971 in a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I Served the King of England is "an extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel" (The New York Times), telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before World War II...Categorized as:
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Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsTo Kitty Charing, the conditions of her guardian's will were intolerable. She had to marry one of his nephews before she could inherit a farthing of the old man's fortune. And the only nephew she wanted was handsome Jack Westruther. Jack, however, made it quite clear he was not ready for marriage...Categorized as:
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Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOne thing that constantly disrupts the peace of life at Blandings is the constant incursion of impostors. Blandings has impostors like other houses have mice. Now there are two of them – both intent on a dangerous enterprise...Categorized as:
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The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsBeneath the kitchen floor is the world of the Borrowers -- Pod and Homily Clock and their daughter, Arrietty. In their tiny home, matchboxes double as roomy dressers and postage stamps hang on the walls like paintings. Whatever the Clocks need they simply "borrow" from the "human beans" who live above them. It's a comfortable life, but boring if you're a kid...Categorized as:
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Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis, Edward Everett Tanner III
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWildly successful when it was first published in 1955, Patrick Dennis' Auntie Mame sold over two million copies and stayed put on the New York Times bestseller list for 112 weeks. It was made into a play, a Broadway as well as a Hollywood musical, and a fabulous movie starring Rosalind Russell...Categorized as:
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Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRoger Mifflin is part pixie, part sage, part noble savage, and all God's creature. With his traveling book wagon named Parnassus, he moves through the New England countryside of 1915 on an itinerant mission of enlightenment. Mifflin's delight in books and authors is infectious--with his singular philosophy and bright eyes, he comes to represent the heart and soul of the book world...Categorized as:
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Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe story begins with Psmith accompanying his fellow Cambridge student Mike to New York on a cricketing tour. Through high spirits and force of personality, Psmith takes charge of a minor periodical, and becomes imbroiled in a scandal involving slum landlords, boxers and gangsters - the story displays a strong social conscience, rare in Wodehouse's generally light-hearted works...Categorized as:
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Flashman and the Tiger by George MacDonald Fraser
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor the first time in four years comes a new book in George MacDonald Fraser's long-running series chronicling the adventures of Sir Harry Paget Flashman. Eleventh in the series, Flashman and the Tiger features not one, but three stories of international intrigue that find the fictional Flashman thrown headlong into historical events around the world...Categorized as:
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Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsMeet Forrest Gump, the lovable, herculean, and surprisingly savvy hero of this remarkable comic odyssey. After accidentally becoming the star of University of Alabama's football team, Forrest goes on to become a Vietnam War hero, a world-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, and a business tycoon -- as he wonders with childlike wisdom at the insanity all around him...Categorized as:
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Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge, Дмитрий Петров
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsUnforgiving Years is a thrilling and terrifying journey into the disastrous, blazing core of the twentieth century. Victor Serge’s final work, here translated into English for the first time, is at once the most ambitious, bleakest, and most lyrical of this neglected major writer’s works.The novel is arranged into four sections, like the panels of an immense mural or the movements of a symphony...Categorized as:
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Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between. An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire...Categorized as:
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The Promise by Ann Weisgarber
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the author of The Personal History of Rachel Dupree , shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers and longlisted for the Orange Prize. 1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal...Categorized as:
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Miguel Street by V.S. Naipaul
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA tender, funny novel written with the verve of Dickens and the passion of Chekhov, set during World War II in a derelict neighborhood in Trinidad's capital and narrated by an unnamed boy--from the Nobel Prize-winning author. "One of the few contemporary writers of whom we can speak in terms of greatness...Categorized as:
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Beer In The Snooker Club (New Writers S) by Waguih Ghali
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSet amidst the turbulence of 1950s Cairo, Beer in the Snooker Club is the story of Ram Bey, an over-educated, under-ambitious young Egyptian struggling to find out where he fits in...Categorized as:
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Officers and Gentlemen by Evelyn Waugh
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFueled by idealism and eagerness to contribute to the war effort, Guy Crouchback becomes attached to a commando unit undergoing training on the Hebridean isle of Mugg, where the whisky flows freely and respect must be paid to the laird. But the comedy of Mugg is soon followed by the bitterness of Crete, where chaos reigns and a difficult evacuation must be accomplished...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult
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